Ernest Richard Bulmer GRIBBLE

GRIBBLE, ERNEST RICHARD BULMER (b. Chilwell, Vic, 23 Nov 1868; d. Yarrabah, Qld, 18 Oct 1957). Missionary to Aborigines.

Ernest Bulmer Gribble was the son of John Brown Gribble (q.v.) and Mary-Anne (nee Bulmer), pioneer missionaries at Warangesda, Carnarvon, and Yarrabah. After working as a teacher, gardener, drover and prospector, Gribble studied for the Church of England ministry. While catechist at Tumbarumba NSW, he received a telegram from his critically ill father, calling on him to take over the Yarrabah Mission. Having shared in the immense hardship of his father's life, Gribble was reluctant to become a missionary. Nevertheless, he travelled to Queensland to join his father late in 1892. After some weeks together at the mission, Ernest sent his father to Sydney. Knowing that he would never see him again, he determined that day to dedicate his life to carrying on his father's work. Gribble was ordained deacon in 1894 and priest in 1898 by the Anglican abp of Sydney, William Saumarez Smith (q.v.).

Stern, hard-working, and physically strong, Gribble put immense effort, often unaided, into the material, educational and spiritual development of the Yarrabah Mission. Although he was an authoritarian person, his concern for the welfare of Aboriginal people was evident, and gradually many settled at the mission. In Christian terms, there was exceptionally sound and rapid spiritual progress at Yarrabah. Many new Christians were baptised in the first few years of the mission, and nine were confirmed in 1896. James Noble (q.v.), already a Christian, joined the mission around this time. He became Gribble's friend and the first Aboriginal person to be ordained in the Church of England.

Gribble was certainly cast in the colonial missionary mould of those who saw one of the final goals of mission as the creation of a self-supporting Christian village, and Yarrabah came to resemble this, with houses, school, hospital, church, agriculture and fishing. Unlike most missionaries of his era, Gribble was willing rapidly to place Aboriginal people in positions of trust. He was, in return, well liked by most of the people, who called him 'Dadda'. Not all was work at Yarrabah. There were sporting teams, a sailing club, a rifle club and a famous brass band.

Yarrabah was supported by both church and government. Qld state funding, however, became tied to the obligation to take in any Aboriginal person, including many sentenced to Yarrabah by the courts. This markedly changed the social structure of the mission, and even the strict Gribble began to find the pressure of maintaining order too much for him. He suffered a breakdown in 1908 and was hospitalised. Although he recovered, he was never allowed to return to Yarrabah in the capacity of missionary.

Gribble served as rector of Gosford for a few years, but in 1913 responded to an urgent request from Gerard Trower, first bp of NorthWest Australia to come to the Forrest River Mission, supported by the Australian Board of Missions. Gribble arrived to a fortress-like mission compound with barbed-wire entanglements. Dismantling these, he set about re-establishing friendly communication. As usual, he immediately asserted his authority, but he also undertook acts of kindness, so that Aboriginal people came to appreciate such gestures as his willingness to care for the sick and injured. Aware of the importance of Aboriginal missionaries, Gribble sent for James and Angelina Noble. Soon there were regular and well-attended Sunday services and a school with Gribble as teacher.

In the Kimberley region of WA in which the mission was situated, Aboriginal people were suffering severe oppression and brutality at the hands of many of the white pastoralists. Gribble commenced a concerted effort to 'save the remnant' on the safety of the reserve and under the protection and tutelage of the mission. Gradually, Aboriginal people allowed him to control their lives, exchanging freedom for safety. For fourteen years, Gribble administered the Forrest River Mission with autocratic paternalism. Then in 1922, police, seeking cattle-killers, entered the reserve and shot a large number of Aboriginal people. Appalled by the massacre, and shocked by the violation of the safety of the reserve, Gribble demanded an inquiry, but he was not heeded.

During the next few years, the continued brutality, the killing of innocent Aboriginal people, and the subsequent denials and coverups brought Gribble to a state of despair. In 1926, in response to the killing of a pastoralist in what Gribble knew was self-defence, a police-led punitive expedition entered the reserve, capturing, chaining, and finally killing every Aborigine they could find. At least 300 Aboriginal people were massacred. Gribble's publicising of the massacres made headlines around Australia. There was an inquiry in which James Noble was instrumental in locating the charred evidence. Under pressure from Gribble, there was a Royal Commission which agreed that at least twelve Aborigines had been shot, these being persons whose remains were identifiable. At a subsequent trial, it was decided that the police in charge of the expedition had killed in self-defence.

Although the ABM committee knew that Gribble had acted heroically in attempting to prevent the massacring of Aborigines, the fact that he was now ostracised by the white people in Wyndham and its region presented them with a dilemma. Furthermore, they were aware that Gribble's desperation to 'save the remnant' was making him even more despotic in his attempt to control the mission. When ABM received an unfavourable report from the priest-anthropologist, Adolphus Elkin, in 1928, they dismissed Gribble. Many Aboriginal people wept at his departure. Gribble was hurt, and remained bitter about his treatment. Nevertheless he volunteered to be chaplain at Palm Island, an Aboriginal penal settlement in North Qld. He was joined there by James Noble and spent some of the happiest years of his life beside the people and not in charge of them. In 1957, at the age of 89, he was appointed OBE. He then returned to Yarrabah, where he died a few months later, buried near his friend James Noble.

Ernest Gribble, like his father, was a complex and difficult man. He was most difficult, however, to those who sought to harm Aboriginal people, and it was his deep anger at their mistreatment which drove him to his obsession with protecting them by isolation and control. He wrote, 'We have a threefold debt to pay to the Aborigines. We owe them a debt for the country we have taken from them. We owe the race reparation for the neglect and cruelty ... We owe them the best that our civilisation has to give, and that is the gospel of our Lord...'

E Gribble, Forty years with the Aborigines (Sydney, 1930); E Gribble, A Despised Race (Sydney, 1933); J Harris, One Blood (Sutherland, 1990)

JOHN HARRIS